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The spice of life

Barrie Kreinik

Non-resolutions for a vibrant new year.

Photo by Barrie Kreinik: Rome, Italy.


I don’t do routines. Other than twice-daily tooth-brushing and a strict skincare regimen—which according to this mildly creepy AI tool has allowed my face to remain 25 even as the rest of me stares down the barrel of 40—there isn’t a single action that I manage to perform every single day.

 

If variety is the spice of life, my life is piquant.

 

For the same reason, I don’t do new year’s resolutions. They’re too prescriptive and too likely to dissolve within weeks (like every routine I’ve ever tried to follow). I do, however, feel inspired at this time of year to ask questions that might shift the balance of my time. What do I want more of? What do I want less of? What can I summon? What can I let go?

 

Some folks might call these intentions, but to me, they’re more like aspirations, or ambitions, or simply desires. I’ve been thinking a lot about mine these past two weeks, so I thought I’d share them here. Perhaps committing these non-resolutions to virtual paper will potentize their power.

 

More socializing, less social media

 

A friend of mine recently sent me this Vox article about the radical political power of friendship and it blew my mind. Then I read this Atlantic article about the decline in socialization over the past century and it knocked me flat. Taken together, they form a treatise on the importance of in-person interactions to our well-being.

 

In the past few years, I’ve come to believe that my raison d’etre is human connection. I love the cozy delight of communing with old friends, the excitement of discovering commonalities and contrasts with new ones, and the cathartic power of connecting with an audience during a performance. To me, relationships are the most important aspect of life. The idea that as a society we’re investing less and less time in them is dismaying.

 

Yet, New York can be a challenging environment for socializing, at least among millennial and Gen X professionals. All my friends are as busy as I am, and none of them live in my immediate neighborhood, so gatherings have to be planned in advance and often require dozens of texts to coordinate. But time spent with kindred spirits is always worth the effort—and with the amount of time we spend in front of screens, face-to-face contact is an ever more crucial source of empathy and joy. So my first aspiration for the new year is to see more of the people I care about, more often.

 

In keeping with doing more socializing, I would like to do less social media. I don’t spend a ton of time there—at least compared to other people my age—but I can’t help thinking that the time I do spend there could be better spent doing almost anything else. The tricky thing is, Facebook and Instagram provide a compelling illusion of connection, allowing us to feel like we know people when we’re actually just peering at their lives through tiny windows. These apps are designed to suck us in, and it can be difficult to free ourselves from their webs. Instagram, in fact, is my only real addiction (unless you count chocolate): I open the app automatically nearly every time I pick up my phone. When one has so few vices, it’s difficult to abandon one that seems so benign, but the algorithmic rabbit hole is bottomless, and I don’t want to keep scrolling when I could be reading or writing or conversing with a real human being.

 

It’s a habit designed to be hard to break, but this year I’m going to try.

 

Less chasing, more allowing

 

I’m a go-getter. If there’s something I want to achieve, I figure out how and I set about doing it. My work as a freelance artist magnifies this tendency. After all, if I don’t submit/post/advertise/query/reach out/generate/ask, I won’t get cast, published, invited, chosen, or hired. Generally speaking, nothing happens if I don’t make it happen.

 

Yet, this isn’t the case in other aspects of life. Friendships can’t be built, they have to blossom. Romance can’t be caught, it sneaks up on you. Creativity and inspiration slip away if you try to grasp them. I’m often too impatient to sit still and trust that the things I want will arrive if I just leave the door open for them. But what might happen if I take a step back and allow more things to come to me instead of chasing them?

 

I don’t know what that looks like yet, but I’m experimenting. Ask me in December how it went.

 

More art, less commerce (and less anxiety)

 

Worry, they say, is like a rocking chair: it gives you something to do, but it doesn’t get you anywhere. Yet there’s so much to worry about right now, it’s hard not to indulge. What if I catch the whooping cough? What if my right to marry is taken away? What if I end up living in a country where the law dictates that “health care for women should also address the needs of men”?

 

Other sources of worry are closer to home. What if my book doesn’t find a publisher? What if my plays don’t get produced? What if I never work in the theatre again? For the past year, I’ve spent a lot of time marketing myself and/or my creations—something that I’m getting better at, but haven’t learned to like. Selling my artistry as a product feels icky, and it only begets more worry. What if nobody likes the thing I made? What if nobody wants to hire me? What if nobody cares to hear what I have to say?

 

This year, I want to return to the art part of art-making. I want to generate new writing in addition to revising ongoing projects. I want to make theatre for the sake of beauty and integrity, not self-promotion. I want to gather in community with other artists, not to network but to bond. I want to spend less time worrying about clicks, likes, and statistics and more time engaged in the actual act of creation. I want to remember the passion that drove me to become a professional artist in the first place.

 

Less noise, more music


Sometimes my mind is abuzz with so many voices—podcasts, broadcasts, articles, conversations, posts—that it feels like it’s filled with the rustling static of video noise. Our nervous systems aren’t designed to take in this much information, and mine is beginning to protest. At the same time, there’s so much to learn and enjoy on so many platforms, I don’t want to miss out. But I think I have to find a way to take breaks from all that noise, and the best way I’ve found to do that is to listen to music more often than speech.

 

I’ve always breathed music like air, but its power to soothe, heal, uplift, and transcend feels more important than ever. In a world full of darkness, music can bring so much light.


This year, I want joy, love, and laughter, hope and generosity. I want fun and adventure, revelation and truth. I want to connect, move, inspire, provoke, ignite.

 

What do you want?

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1 Comment


Guest
Jan 18

well done!

love,

m


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© 2024 by Barrie Kreinik. Created with Wix.com

Portrait photography by David Perlman.

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